


Relapse

by hotchoco195



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Can be read with a Johnlock squint, Drug Addiction, Identity, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Mycroft Being a Good Brother, Nostalgia, Past Relationship(s), Post-Reichenbach, Sherlock-centric, or at least trying to be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-19
Updated: 2013-12-19
Packaged: 2018-01-05 04:10:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1089460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hotchoco195/pseuds/hotchoco195
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock Holmes stepped off the St Bart’s roof and died.</p><p>Well, not technically.</p><p>(in which Sherlock comes back from the dead and discovers he's got even less of a life)</p><p>(or in which certain old vices make a reappearance)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Relapse

Falling is not like flying. Flying is freedom, exploration, beauty; falling is a one-way journey. You can fall in love, you can fall off the wagon, but no matter what you have to fall _down._

 

Sherlock Holmes stepped off the St Bart’s roof and died.

 

Well, not technically.

But he might as well have been a ghost, never staying in one place, never out of the shadows. He haunted the criminal classes of London, Paris, Rome and Berlin; of Moscow, New York, Tel Aviv and Toyko; of Johannesburg, Kabul, Shanghai and Bangkok. He was a different person every time he looked in the mirror, different again when he was laying his traps, different when it all came down to him and the target and ‘kill or be killed’.

He lived without time, dealing only in hours, days at the most, and never thinking about anything beyond the next step. Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective, no longer existed. There was only the hunter and his hundred names.

 

After three years of gritty hotel rooms and cardboard boxes under bridges and tin shed slums, the hunter found his way back to London for his Final Prize. And though London never changed, it felt different. It felt...wrong. It wasn’t his London anymore.

*****

Mrs Hudson screamed, Lestrade cursed him out and John punched him. He’d expected that.

Mycroft hugged him like he was afraid Sherlock was going to melt out of his arms, tears soaking into the collar of his shirt. He didn’t expect that. He didn’t expect to return the gesture either.

“There’s a room for you at my place until you’re ready to start looking for your own.”

“Your place? What about Baker Street?”

“You didn’t think Mrs Hudson left it vacant all this time, did you? God, we’ve got so much to do!”

“Don’t bother.”

Mycroft stopped. “Sherlock, don’t you want to show people you weren’t a fraud?”

“Why does it matter what the ordinary people think? John knows, Lestrade knows. You know. It’s simpler this way, without all the attention.”

He gave Sherlock a funny smile but (for perhaps the first time ever) didn’t argue.

 

He stayed with Mycroft for two weeks, two weeks of his brother being overly attentive in his usual cloying way. Sherlock couldn’t deal with being stared at over breakfast as if Mycroft hadn’t known Sherlock was alive - as if Jim’s network had unravelled thanks to some mysterious, unknown person - as if he was starting to believe all the hype about Sherlock’s genius. Sherlock wasn’t looking to be hero-worshipped, especially not by Mycroft, so he found a small flat-for-one down by the river and far from Bart’s and started filling it with the bare necessities.

He couldn’t work. In the days before John’s blog most of his cases had come from Mycroft or Lestrade, and since the D.I. was being thoroughly monitored by his superiors that left Mycroft and his tedious political intrigues. Sherlock had had enough of spider’s webs and machinations. He wanted a few simple homicides with purely personal motives, and he wanted his privacy, and there was just no way for the two to overlap.

 

“Mary, this is Sherlock. Sherlock Holmes.”

John’s pretty wife was smiling, but it twitched when she finally understood who he was.

“Oh. John’s told me so much about you.”

Standard response, very pedestrian, and how the hell was she tolerating that hideous moustache?

“I’m sure the papers told even more.”

Did she actually _like_ it?

“I never believed them.” She said quickly.

“I wouldn’t blame you if you had. They can be very convincing.”

“So, are you taking cases again?” John tilted his head (and hideous moustache) with an odd expression.

“No. Not just yet.”

“Earned yourself a holiday, I reckon.”

“I suppose.”

“You know I thought Mycroft would have your return splashed all over the place. Clear his brother’s name, that sort of thing.”

“I asked him not to.”

John half-laughed. “What? Why?”

“It wasn’t important.”

“Sherlock, people have been telling me I’m a nutter for _three years_ because I wouldn’t stop trying to prove Moriarty set you up!”

“I didn’t need you to do that.” He said quietly.

“Well fuck you too then. I guess once again, what I think doesn’t matter.”

“It’s always mattered.”

That knocked the wind out of John’s sails, and the three of them sat in strained silence. Sherlock looked around at the chintzy living room, the floral couches and the framed wedding photos and the comfortable blankets and cushions. It was like being wrapped in one of John’s fuzzy sweaters. There was no place there for the hunter between the doctor and the schoolteacher.

“I’ll stop by again soon.”

“Yeah, alright.”

 

Couldn’t go to Bart’s, couldn’t go to Scotland Yard, couldn’t take cases. Sherlock’s world shrank down to the three rooms of his flat and the occasional visit to see Mrs Hudson (and the occasional forced visit from Mycroft). He should have been bored but three years is a long time, long enough to get used to being on your own and distrusting those around you. Sherlock didn’t mind the solitude. He had plenty of old deductions to sort through, stuff he couldn’t properly catalogue during the chase. He sat on his bed and sifted through the halls of his mind palace, information flying across the back of his eyelids.

*****

There was no way back. Sherlock Holmes fell off a roof and was buried under a heap of newsprint; his life was gone.

*****

Sherlock walked along the Thames, hands in his coat pockets, eyes on the river. It was very late and very bright, the moon a huge full circle overhead. Sherlock could make out his homeless tucked into nooks and alleys (at least they had welcomed him back, no questions asked). He could see boats and warehouses and tall office towers, his head swirling with all the things he’d done and couldn’t talk about. Maybe he should write them down or lock them in a room of his mind where even he couldn’t find them. Maybe he should build himself a new identity and forget the one he’d left behind, until even he thought Sherlock Holmes was dead.

His feet took him further south off the clear pavements and into smaller, twisting streets. He didn’t know where he was going, just walked. He didn’t need a purpose. Moriarty had been his, and now he was gone.

He turned at random corners and crossed the road when he felt like it and waited at roundabouts for long minutes, and yet somehow when he stopped near dawn he knew exactly where he was. Sherlock examined the old house, its facade once grand during the Georgian years and now thick with dirty moulding and flaking paint, dwarfed by the buildings beside it. He hadn’t thought about this house for ten years and still he knew exactly what it looked like inside. He should go home, get a cab – or walk. It wasn’t like he needed to be anywhere. Instead he knocked on the door.

It was a stupid exercise really, expecting that nothing had changed (or expecting that it _had_ ) and Sherlock was breaking his own vow just standing there – but those vows belonged to someone long gone and now he was the hunter, scenting fresh prey.

“Coming!”

His breath hitched in his throat and then the door opened and it all rushed out as a muffled sigh. The man was shorter than Sherlock, solidly built like John but wearing a very loose grey t-shirt and tight black jeans with the knees ripped out. His black hair straight hung to just past his chin, faint stubble giving him the appearance of a rogue troubadour. He had a necklace under his shirt, the chain just visible at the neck, and a thumb ring. His feet were bare.

“Victor.”

He frowned, blinked, frowned again. “Sherlock? Bloody hell, is that you?”

“Can I come in?”

Victor’s face hardened for a moment. “Thought you were done with me.”

“Well now I’m done with me.”

“And you expect I’ll roll out the red carpet? They’ve been saying some messed up shit about you, Curls.”

“Did you believe any of it?”

Victor scanned his face for a moment and snorted, holding the door open to let Sherlock in. “What do you think?”

 

It hadn’t changed except to get older and dustier, little bits of crap you’d find in your pockets littering the tops of the furniture. The kitchen was as small as ever, too small, but they kept walking. There would be time later for tea and 2-minute noodles and maybe toast, maybe ice cream. Sherlock followed Victor up the stairs to the large open room on the second floor. The mattress was resting on stolen milk crates and the floor was covered in huge pieces of dirty paper, equations and formulas scrawled over them. None of the letters meant anything; they were just scribbles and half-remembered debris. There was a cupboard in the corner, the clothes overflowing through a gap in the doors, and several bare-bulbed lamps.

“This is new.” He ran a hand over the back of a metal chair.

“Not all my guests were as happy as you to sit on the floor.”

There was an accusation there, and an admission, a reminder that there had been others. Sherlock didn’t mind. He specifically told Victor to move on, and he’d been busy with his work and John.

“Is that a comment on my standards?” he smiled.

“Maybe. You did waste your time on me when half the year was gaggin’ for ya.”

“Only until they actually met me. The romance was shattered fairly quickly.”

They laughed.

“What are you doing up so early then?”

“I couldn’t sleep so I took a walk.”

“Yeah, for how long this time?”

“I don’t know, a few hours...maybe four.”

Anyone else might have been surprised but Victor just nodded.

“Why don’t you hang up your things and we’ll talk?”

He cleared off part of the bed, straightening the sheets as Sherlock carefully removed his coat and draped it over the chair. He was only wearing a thin shirt underneath, unbuttoned more than was proper for decent conversation without turning him into a Harlequin Romance hero. He toed off his shoes and sat next to Victor, eyes narrowing enviously as the other man lit up a smoke.

“You want one?” he exhaled coolly.

“Why the hell not? I’ve already died once.”

Victor wrapped a hand around Sherlock’s to steady it and held up the lighter, their eyes on each other as the flame took.

“You wanna tell me about it, Curls?”

“I’m not sure you want to hear it.”

“I always wanna hear you talk.”

Sherlock sighed and opened his mouth, and the words just fell out. Fell, not flew.

*****

Victor Trevor met Sherlock on the second day of uni, stumbling home from the pub with a tipsy redhead on his arm. The boy was sitting on the front steps of the dorm in his dressing gown and pyjamas, lip stuck out in a huff.

“You alright there, mate?”

“My roommate threw me out. Said he’s going to ask for a transfer in the morning.”

“It’s only the second day. What did you do?”

“I told him his girlfriend was cheating on him.”

“How’d you know that?”

“I used my eyes.”

Victor had shrugged. “Guess you’d better sleep on my floor then.”

He was, not surprisingly, Sherlock’s only friend. Sebastian and some of the others gravitated around the handsome Holmes, delighting in the destruction he could cause with a few simple observations, but they never really liked him. Victor? Victor thought he was sex on legs. The deduction stuff was just par for the course.

 

He didn’t really get into the drugs until the last year. He’d always liked a good party but after the whole mess with Sherlock and his father...well. Finding out your dad’s a common crook can shake your faith in authority.

They floated together in the same haze, spending more time strung out naked in bed than in class. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Sherlock’s brain slowed to a crawl and Victor lost himself in the other man’s flesh and it didn’t matter who they were or where they came from.

 “You shouldn’t take it this far, Vic.” Sherlock said as he helped him into the dorm yet again.

“Why the hell not? It’s fun. No one’s gettin’ hurt.”

“Except your grades.”

“Like you give a toss about grades, Mr Wonderful! When was the last time you were sober?”

They didn’t speak for three days, and when Victor opened the door and found a red-eyed Sherlock biting his lip he knew he was the only person Holmes actually cared about.

*****

It felt better to tell someone, and Victor apparently still knew what he liked in an audience. He kept them both supplied with cigarettes and didn’t ask questions unless he absolutely had to and never made faces when Sherlock told him what he’d done, what he’d had to do.

When he finished summing up about five years of his life in two hours, Sherlock sat back against the pillows and took another drag. Victor lifted himself onto his elbow and shook his head.

“You never do things the ordinary way, do you?”

“Ordinary is boring.”

“Am I boring then?” he smiled wryly, “Look around you, Curls. I’m in the same place I was last time we spoke. Just your run-of-the-mill trust fund junkie, burning through Daddy’s ill-gotten gains faster than oxygen. There’s nothing special about me.”

“I can think of a few things.”

“Oh? Like what?”

“You’re the only man who’s ever had me, for example.”

A brow inched higher on his forehead. “Is that so?”

Sherlock didn’t have to say he’d swapped out one addiction for another; Victor didn’t have to say he knew exactly how easily Sherlock could have found someone if he’d wanted. Instead he stubbed his smoke into the ashtray on the floor and stood.

“Drink?”

“I think I’m past that.”

 _That_ got his attention. Victor searched his face for something. “You sure?”

“I wouldn’t have knocked if I didn’t want it, Vic.”

“Forgive me for being sceptical. Last time you decided I was ruining your life.”

“Mycroft. Mycroft decided,” his eyes flashed, “And he got what he wanted. I helped people, made the noble sacrifice. But I wasn’t happy.”

“And this, this is what you want, Curls?” he waved a hand at the squalor around them.

“After the last three years, this is a fucking paradise.”

The recipe came to mind without prompting but his hands were rusty and Victor had to help him line it up. He stood behind the detective, arms around him as he held the skin taut with one hand and closed the other over Sherlock’s on the syringe.

“Just like breathing, remember?”

“Just like that.”

The plunger fell and Sherlock relaxed back into him with a groan, the liquid already scouring through his veins.

“You just dropped off the edge of the world, Curls.”

“Come with me.”

“You don’t have to ask. With me, you never have to ask.”

 

This must have been heaven. Sherlock jumped off a building and he was finally enjoying his eternal bliss. There were no thoughts and no memories, just warmth through his body and a feeling of peace.

“That Watson of yours was pretty choked up when they said you were dead, you know.”

He rolled his head lazily to face Victor. “We were friends.”

“Were?”

He didn’t quite get the question, or he didn’t care about the answer, or Victor’s eyes were too blue and too deep to ignore.

“Did you cry, Vic?”

“I thought it was a shitty ending for an epic story.”

“You know, Moriarty always reminded me of you.”

“Oh yeah? I’m flattered, I think.”

“You both love drama.”

“Good thing too, or neither of us would have put up with you.”

Sherlock smiled giddily, rubbing the back of his head against the mattress.

“Here, got something of yours.” Victor rummaged through a small box and held up a silver chain with an ‘S’ pendant.

Sherlock’s brows shot up. He reached over slowly to finger the metal. “You kept it.”

“Of course I bloody kept it. You said it was a family heirloom.”

“I half expected you’d have sold it the second I left.”

“You don’t think much of me, Curls.”

Sherlock smiled, taking the necklace. “I’m glad you held onto it.”

“I’m glad to see it back where it belongs.”

He shuffled closer and craned his neck until his lips reached Victor’s, and it wasn’t quite falling. It was easier. The other man’s arms opened and Sherlock slotted between them like he’d never left.

*****

“What happened to all your mountains of crap?” Victor raised a brow at the small suitcase.

“Most of it was given away. The rest I learned to live without.”

Victor made ham and cheese on toast and Sherlock unpacked, and when he was done it looked exactly the same as before he got there.

“There’s a party over on the North Bank tonight. What do you think, couple of drinks, dancing?”

“I’m trying to keep a low profile.”

“What, forever?”

“If that’s what it takes.”

Victor shrugged. “No one’s gonna expect to see a dead man in a warehouse rave.”

“It’s not the public I’m worried about.”

He lifted his chin as Mycroft’s name hovered in the air between them. “Right.”

He went into the living room and messed around with something, crinkling papers, clicking plastic, and then the soft sound of the Stones spread through the house, vinyl crackling through the speakers with its odd irregular pops. Victor took down two glasses, finding a bottle of gin at the back of the pantry.

“We’ll have our own rave then.”

“The company will be infinitely better.”

Victor grabbed his hand and pulled Sherlock out of his chair, arms slithering around his waist. He squeezed Sherlock’s arse as they swayed and the taller man laughed.

“Just like old times.”

“No,” Victor shook his head, “I don’t think we can compare the two.”

“You said yourself you haven’t changed.”

“You have.”

He rested his brow on Victor’s shoulder. “I can’t help that.”

“Let it all go, Curls. It’s ancient history. Delete it.”

“I’m trying.”

“Here, I’ve got a few things that might help.”

 

The music played at all hours of the night, Sherlock’s sleep cycle descending into total chaos. He passed out at random moments or napped at midday, sometimes just watching Victor scrawl his nonsense solutions on the bedroom floor until his eyes got tired. They ate when they remembered, they bathed when they remembered, and Victor went out once a day for cigarettes and groceries and booze (and the score, always the score).

It was like some glorious combination of his life undercover and his memories of uni. Time was fluid, immeasurable. It could be divided into two states of being: sober and not. Everything else was like the sequence of the tides, new waves of sleep crashing over him on their own schedule, his body seeking Victor’s across the space between them. Occasionally (very occasionally, when Victor felt a little more hyper than usual) they had people over, but he never bothered to learn their names and he let Victor do all the talking. Sherlock was never bored and never scolded, and he wondered why he’d ever accused Victor of being the problem. Surely this was the solution.

 

The knock came as Sherlock was measuring out potassium nitrate in nothing but a lab coat, boxers and safety glasses.

“Vic!”

“I’m coming, I’m coming.” He called.

Whoever it was knocked again, short and polite but insistent. Sherlock clucked his tongue in annoyance and Victor appeared at the top of the stairs, pulling a shirt over his head as he skipped down. His face fell as he opened it.

“Mycroft. To what do I owe the displeasure?”

“Where is he?”

“I think if he wanted to talk, he’d call you.”

The statesman sniffed and pushed past, walking straight down the hall. He cast an eye over the equipment and glassware cluttering every surface of the kitchen before looking at Sherlock, mouth set grimly.

“I don’t recall inviting you,” He set down his test tubes and slid the glasses up onto his head, “How did you manage to track me down this time, hmm? Phone GPS, cameras, some kind of implant?”

“I cannot believe, of all places, you would come here. After everything we went through -”

“We? _We_ didn’t go through shit, Mycroft. I was torn away from my lover and purged in a nice place with doctors and gardens, and blackmailed into becoming someone else. You just sat back and pulled the strings.”

“You’re better than this, Sherlock.”

“Am I? Ask around, Sherlock Holmes is a fake and a criminal.”

“You know that’s not true, and if you’d let me we could prove it.”

“I don’t want to prove it. I don’t want to go back to that life. It’s gone, Mycroft. John, Baker Street, Lestrade, all of it. I’m free.”

“I understand you’re having trouble adjusting but this is not the answer.”

“Is that so? And how would you know? You’ve been running on uptight prick mode since 1989.”

“Sherlock-”

He slammed a hand on the table. “No! No Mycroft, you can’t tell me I was happier after your interference.”

“You weren’t overdosing in a ditch.”

“The drugs never made me as numb as your supposed ‘cure’.”

He sighed. “There has to be some middle ground, Sherlock. Some way to care without self-destructing.”

“Not for me.”

“Sherly, I have already lost you once in recent times. I could not bear to do it again.”

“I’m sorry if my happiness inconveniences you.” He said acidly.

“You know that’s not what I mean.”

Sherlock spread his arms. “Give it up, Mycroft. I’m past saving. I don’t want to be rescued, I don’t want the redemption you’re offering. This is the life I’ve salvaged from the mess you and Moriarty made, and it’s the one I want.”

“And if it kills you?”

“Something has to eventually.”

He gripped his umbrella until the wood creaked and nodded, eyes on the floor. “I see. I am truly sorry if you think I ruined your life, Sherlock. I only ever tried to protect you.”

“I know,” Sherlock’s tone softened, “I’ll call you sometimes.”

“Thank you.”

He nodded and headed for the door, pausing where Victor was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed.

“Do try to look after him.”

“That’s my idea of a good time, isn’t it?”

 

Victor watched Mycroft’s car drive off through the curtains and bounded back to the kitchen. Sherlock was pouring out chemicals as if nothing had happened.

“You alright, Curls?”

“I think I’ll manage.”

He drifted behind the brunette, lips against his shoulder as he slid his hands down Sherlock’s hips. He made an appreciative noise and set down his beaker, turning to kiss Victor. He narrowly avoided putting his hand in a Petri dish as he leaned against the counter, running his fingers through Sherlock’s hair.

It might not have been perfect and it might not have been safe, and it might look to everyone else like Sherlock had been burned, but Victor knew better.

“You sure about this? I’m not that special.”

“You’re the only person I’ve ever needed.”

“Maybe I should send Moriarty a thank you then. Leave some roses on his headstone?”

“You’d have to find it first.”

“Bet you could figure it out. You’re clever like that.” He winked, recapturing Sherlock’s mouth.

 


End file.
